Bitter Sweet
by Senko Wakimarin
Summary: Naruto. ZabuzaxHaku. The night before they die, Haku promises they'll never be apart for long. Zabuza quickly learns that some promises are fullfilled on the most bittersweet terms.
1. Chapter 1

**Bitter Sweet**

_For Ami-soh (because you asked so nicely)_

Chapter 1: Weakness

"Haku."

The boy looked up from his book, meeting Zabuza's eyes immediately.

"Come to my room tonight."

Haku nodded and turned back to his book after a quick glance out the window to check the time. The days when that command had any power to shock him were long gone… and yet, his heart still sped up, if only a little. The thought of what he would be doing- of what would be done to him- had never lost the power to send a shiver down his spine.

Zabuza had never been rough with him. No, in the months since the older nin had begun to bed him, Zabuza had been amazingly gentle- even playful sometimes. But no matter how playful he might get, the swordsman had never once kissed him on the mouth. It was some sort of taboo; without a word passing between the pair, Haku knew it wasn't allowed. The one time he'd tried, Zabuza had simply turned his head away. Haku hadn't made a second attempt.

As Zabuza's tool, he didn't mind the sex. As a human being, he rather enjoyed it. He only wished that he was allowed that simple gesture… but he wasn't really surprised that it was denied him. While he was quite truly in love with his master, Haku was certain that Zabuza's attentions were based more on carnal desire and need than any sort of finer emotion. And he was fine with that, because it was Zabuza and what Zabuza wanted, he was obligated to give. He _enjoyed _giving himself up to Zabuza, in any case, so no one was really loosing anything.

Marking his place in the book, Haku took in the last of the fading light from out the window before sliding from his chair. A small smile lit his face and another shiver of anticipation laced down his spine as he headed for his master's room.

Brushing the front of his yukata, he knocked softly at Zabuza's door. It opened almost immediately, and Zabuza stepped aside to let the boy in without a word. Haku stepped into the middle of the room and stopped, waiting in silence.

Strong arms wrapped around him, holding him tightly to that familiar broad chest. He could feel Zabuza's breath against his scalp as the older man pressed his nose into his hair, and he trembled in response.

Lips caressed his ear, nipping at the lobes before moving on to his neck. Hands wandered to push away his hair, his robe, baring his shoulder for that questing mouth. After one last kiss was pressed to the smooth flesh of his shoulder, Haku felt himself directed to the bed, and allowed himself to be moved. Zabuza pressed him to the bed, and as he lay on his back the swordsman stood over him, looking down. As always, he felt a blush creep over his face as he watched Zabuza untie and open his yukata with deft fingers. Skin rippling in goose flesh as hands trailed over his now bare chest, Haku did his best to remain silent.

But those hands were like fire to his flesh, sending little ribbons of pleasure through his spine. Zabuza knew just where to go, what to press to bring those soft keens to the youth's lips, and soon enough Haku was gasping and arching toward his master. Lying there with his nakedness framed by his own silken robe, Haku felt the warmth spread from his face to his stomach.

One hand moved to cup his face, thumb lightly stroking his cheek, and the young tracker looked up into eyes that were sparked, not with lust (as was expected) but something akin to affection. Zabuza was smiling, and although the expression was a stranger to his face, it looked nice there. Even Haku, who knew this face more intemately than anyone alive, rarely saw such a look. He could hardly resist smiling back as he leaned against that hand.

"I didn't know boys could be so beautiful."

Haku's blush deepened. His master had often compared his looks to women, had even gone so far once as to call him effeminate. He had never outright called him even pretty, much less beautiful. He floundered for something to say, and whatever look crossed is face must have been very amusing indeed, because suddenly Zabuza was chuckling, pressing soft kisses down his neck to his clavicle.

"Does such acknowledgement make you nervous, Haku?" The older nin whispered, his rough voice muffled by the skin pressed so close. His lips trailed lower over the youth's chest, pausing to tease the raised flesh of one nipple. Encouraged by the low hiss of breath from his student, he lingered for a moment. When he looked up to see the boy gasping for breath from his ministrations, the smile that curved his lips was full of more honest affection than he ever could have imagined.

Finally, Haku made an attempt at responding, his voice near a whisper. "Zabuza-san, I…I…" Yet words still failed; he was at a loss for what to say. He knew what he wanted to say… but it seemed almost as if saying what he felt was as great a taboo as the kiss he so desperately wanted.

"You what?" Zabuza asked, his eyes narrowing slightly, smile fading as quickly as it appeared. "You love me?"

His bitter, nearly mocking tone stung worse than any of the cuts or broken bones Haku had yet to suffer in his life. His breath caught in his throat- he had no more expected to be cut to the quick like this than he had expected Zabuza to call him beautiful- and he found his voice was lost again. His eyes stung, so he shut them, and for the first time since he was very young, he wished that Zabuza would go away.

The problem was not having the swordsman know his feelings- that they had gone unspoken between the pair didn't lessen the fact that both were aware of them. It wasn't even that Zabuza didn't return his emotion; Haku had never expected that he would. The problem was the out right rejection, the mockery and bitterness to Zabuza's tone. It was the loss of a newly sweet and almost romantic moment to something frigid and uncomfortable.

Unbidden, tears came to his eyes, and though he didn't make a sound, they slipped down his cheeks anyway. This was not how he wanted to spend the night, not how he ever wanted to appear before Zabuza.

Those strong arms slid beneath him, holding him, and slowly, his eyes wide open and serious, the older man began pressing soft kisses to Haku's cheeks. So desperate was the boy to cease this display of weakness, so focused was he on the gentle way he was being held, that it took Haku several moments to realize what Zabuza was doing- that he was kissing away his tears. Then, he gripped the boy's shoulders, pulling away so he could look him in the eye as he spoke.

"Don't think you love me," Zabuza said softly, as gently as he ever had. "Such a thing could make you weak. If you feel anything for me, until our goal is met, then fight for me. Train for me; kill for me if the time comes for that. But do not love me. Not now."

It seemed the world spun around him as he began to make sense of what Zabuza was saying, of what their actions had meant until now and the promises lying unspoken between the words Zabuza had chosen. _Do not love me. Not now._ As the earth tilted and he finally understood, Haku opened his eyes, a new sort of ache waking in his breast. If he allowed love and the compassion that came with it, their objective could never be reached. Such emotions would lead him to do dangerous things, stupid things that would ruin all their careful plans. So he couldn't love, he would have to harden his heart, if only for a little while.

Not now… 

So he nodded, and he tried for a smile that would communicate such understanding.

The swordsman inclined his head and pressed another kiss to the boy's cheek, just below his ear, and Haku shivered, some small warmth restored to their moment. When Zabuza looked back to Haku's face, the young tracker had his hands locked around the back of his neck, arching to push their hips together.

Something passed between them, communication in a language that predated speech, and then his lips were pressed to Haku's. It was something the boy would never forget, that first kiss- the tender tilt of their heads, the feeling of Zabuza's teeth beneath his lips; the scent of his skin so close, the roughness of the hairs caught beneath his fingers as he pressed his hands harder to the back of Zabuza's neck.

Heat flared in his stomach, his groin now as well, and he pressed further against his master. The kiss, which was closed mouthed and not quite chaste, blossomed like a flower: became slow and open and humid. Zabuza's tongue touched his lower lip, hesitantly, and he shyly met it; the kiss finding a natural rhythm that seemed to defy the need for either of them to breathe.

As the elder shinobi pressed closer, his tongue delving deep into his partner's mouth, Haku could feel the stone hardness between his master's legs, and understood the urgency of the hips grinding to his own. It was as if there had been no pause in their love-play, so insistent was the heat between them, and Haku let their whispered words leave his mind, basking in this new display of lust.

His hands slid to Zabuza's waist, easily unsnapping the clasps to his pants. The low moan breathed into his mouth as his hand slid lower was sweet to his ears, and he let his fingers wander for a little longer before pulling them away.

He helped Zabuza with what was left of his clothes, and for a moment they only lay naked together in the quiet of the room. They lay in each other's arms, and when Zabuza found his way inside, Haku felt pain melt away almost instantly into sweetness. They made love in the sterile, lifeless home they had always shared, putting questions of love and servitude aside; promising forever and forgetting that forever was always shorter than lovers imagine. As the end swept over both of them, Haku felt Zabuza's lips on his face, kissing him over and over. So were the lovers joined for the last time, in the country of waves, near the end of their lives. So were the lovers joined, a sweet tint to so bitter an ending.

When it was over, and they simply lay together, a tangled mess made of their legs, sharing kisses beneath the mild gaze of the moon, Zabuza felt himself drowsing. It was not surprising; after the fight only a day behind them, and another soon to come, there had been much to stress him. He had slept badly, and (though he did not know it) this night would be the last real sleep he'd ever have.

"Zabuza-san?" Haku's voice was distant, sweet. "When you have all it is you want, will you leave?"

The older man snorted, turning on his side to look at the boy. "For us to seperate, you would have to leave."

Haku smiled, contented, and as he drifted off to sleep beside his master, he mumbled just once more. "Never," Zabuza heard him say, and then he too was sleeping.

...TBC...


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two: Death

Zabuza hadn't expected battle with the Copy-cat Ninja to be easy. He'd expected injury; temporary defeat even… but never this. He couldn't even quite understand what had happened. Haku was supposed to be dealing with Kakashi's brats…

As if to make things all the worse, everything seemed to have slowed down, allowing such perfect perception of detail as to make him nearly ill. Haku appeared before him, presumably thinking to defend his master. Impossibly slow, that glowing arm approached, and yet neither moved, Zabuza because he could not, Haku because he wouldn't.

Even the splash of blood seemed leisurely, splattering hotly on Zabuza's chest, arms, across his face in a garish paint. Too loud, he could hear Haku's ribs splinter, smell the blood and burning flesh as that hand hit, broke, and passed through the delicate body. The fingers grappled with the air, as if still trying to reach the swordsman through the gore.

Impossibly, the boy managed to raise his arms, holding on to Kakashi, and for a moment Zabuza deluded himself, thinking Haku could somehow survive. Yet the young tracker seemed to slouch against the arm impaling him, and as his death became clear, rage replaced dumb shock in Zabuza's head.

Certainly, he would have cleaved strait through his student to get to that self-righteous bastard, would have ripped his opponent apart with his bare hands for his vengeance. Anything but acknowledge the loss teasing his mind.

Once more, time distorted; it had been so slow, with each detail crystallized in his mind, now it became inconceivably fast. In a blur everything was closing in on an end. Each moment was lost to a cacophony of sound and red-tinted images, highlighted by words that meant nothing and bursts of pain as his arms were broken.

Then, like hell's clockwork, Gato appeared. Gato- that disgusting little toad, that hateful, manipulative, sorry excuse for a human. Gato, with his creeping voice and laugh like broken glass, betraying him, tricking him. As the world came down around his shoulders, his plans with it, Zabuza felt his rage abate, leaving him cold. His terse statement of peace with Kakashi spoke enough of that.

His hardened heart refused to be moved, even as that miserable bastard lashed out at the broken body of his fallen student. The screaming of Kakashi's boy was like a chisel to his stony veneer, each word working to find a fault line. Each time he tried to rebuild, the boy attacked some new way, his words managing to crack away at the stone of his heart. Each teary claim reminded him in a new way of the boy he had lost, of the emotion he denied… and nothing, it seemed, would shut the blonde child up.

The use of his own phrase, having his own words thrown back in his face… somehow that broke through. Pain, deeper and more real than anything he'd allowed himself to feel sank into his chest.

He hardly understood his own words, only knew that they were honest, that they helped clear his head. A swordsman no more, Zabuza took the blonde boy's kunai, thrown so trustingly to him clamped it between his teeth, and looked to Gato. More than anything, he wanted that swine to know what was going to happen to him, and judging by the look on the smaller man, the message was clear.

It was all too easy to break through that mass of ill-equipped pretend ninja. That's what Gato got for hiring cheap. Even with the blade dug into his back, he caught up with the old man, sinking the kunai deep into his flesh before the bolts of pain intensified, more blades eating into his back, into his spine.

Even that was not enough to stop him, and Gato's fool mouth infused him with enough anger to finish it. In a final brutal swing, the lying pig flew from the bridge, and Zabuza turned back to rest of them.

They parted, he hardly heard their gasps and whimpers; he was interested only in reaching his boy, his student. Each step seemed to sap away a little more, his vision doubling, trebling, blurring incomprehensibly, until suddenly he was on his knees. View now blackening on the edges, Zabuza could only ask forgiveness from this distance before his mind shut down, giving into the pain.

Next he knew, there was cheering… the villagers. It sounded as if they had won, and he said so. Kakashi- still self-righteous, but perhaps less of a bastard after all, helped him; pulling the blades from his back and without question taking him to Haku's side.

Feeling those cold pinpricks on his face, laying on the frigid ground with his lifeblood seeping from him in steady streams, Zabuza didn't doubt that Haku would hear his last words. Though it hurt greatly, he managed to raise his hand, placing it to the cold flesh of the boy's cheek, lightly caressing it as he had done only the night before.

He wondered, briefly as he stared at that pretty face, if Haku had been in the right. Perhaps if the emotions between them had been open, this would have ended differently. Perhaps, at least, their deaths would have been easier, less painful.

Without any hope for it becoming true, he absently breathed his last wish… he wanted only to see Haku again, if only for the chance to say what he had never been able to before.

With his young lover's face his last sight, Zabuza, the demon of the mist, let his eyes drop closed, and slid into the final darkness.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three: Redemption

Fate is a complex thing. It sweeps across the lives of men without care for plans or expectations, and even when it seems so cruel, it works in balance. Fate is a wheel- acts of greed and selfish pride are punished with loss and humiliation; acts of giving and humility are rewarded in kind. Martyrdom begets glory, lies lead to pain.

Fate may claim the life of a youth through an act of love; it may claim a grown man through grief. There are only two consistencies in fate- the acts of balance, and death.

Sometimes the balance is difficult, and these difficulties frame the questions of human faith: Does love really transcend all boundaries? When can forgiveness be given?

Can a sinner be saved?

Questions of faith rely on faith for their answers. No question is answered easily, and no two people share the same outlook on the 'correct answer'. In the end, only fate can decide who's truly forgiven. Only fate places the souls to salvation or damnation.

Only fate can redeem.

Though he'd given up to darkness in the cold, and he woke in warmth. Not the burning heat he would have expected, but the calming warmth of another person's skin near his. He didn't hurt, but his joints felt loose, disconnected… similar to the way he felt when he woke up after Haku's needle attack.

He sat up on his elbows, looking around the room. It was like his own, but somehow not, and as the sheet slid from his chest to his waist, he was struck by how cold the air was. He breath exhaled in little clouds, and frost was creeping up the windows. No, this was not his room; wherever it was, it was far too cold to be his home. And in any case… wasn't he dead?

Returning his attention to the bed, he smiled to see Haku, still curled up under the sheets. The smile quickly faded to a mild frown, slight puzzlement crossing his face. They were dead, yes; but how could they remain together? His hand, without conscious order, rose to brush several strands of ebony hair out of the boy's face, and his smile returned when Haku nuzzled against that warmth, still sleeping.

Nothing made sense here, and yet Zabuza couldn't deny that it all felt right. Even this bitter cold meant something, it tugged at his mind though he couldn't quite fit it. He swung his legs from the bed, noting dimly that he wasn't wearing anything. Absently he reached down, finding his pants among the clothing tossed about the floor. He'd pulled them on and was looking for his shirt before he realized that the clothes were entangled much as they had been on the morning of his death.

It was only slightly warmer in his clothing, as he walked slowly from the room and into a short hall. The house was not his, and yet it felt similar nonetheless - it felt as lifeless and unused as the one he'd shared with Haku, and the deadness of the home was highlighted by the freezing cold. The floors were creeping with frost in some places, and every window he passed was blurred with ice.

Zabuza found himself sitting in the chair from which Haku had observed his last sunset. On the table beside him he wasn't surprised to find the book his student had been reading, marked with a thin strip of fabric that felt suspiciously like part of his bandaging. He picked it up and held it in his lap, watching the snow fall outside the window, trying not to think about where he was and what it meant. Trying to resist praying that he wouldn't wake up from a dangerously hopeful dream.

How long he sat, numbly watching the snow swirl down, he wasn't sure. It was the soft sound of bare feet on hard wood that brought him from his thoughts. Looking up into Haku's smiling brown eyes, he silently opened his arms. Haku wasted no time moving into the embrace, fingers wrapping into the fabric of Zabuza's shirt. With the boy in his arms, he found himself almost clinging to the smaller frame, trying to convince himself that they were really both here. It was reassuring that Haku held just as tightly to him, pressing their skin together so Zabuza forgot the cold, forgot death, and thought only of his student.

When they pulled away, it was only to readjust into more comfortable positions, so that Haku sat mostly in Zabuza's lap, both curled together on the chair. The older man held the boy securely, one hand tangled in the long strands of black hair, soothed by the hands locked behind his neck. Haku rested his head against his master's chest, his arms still wrapped around the bigger man.

"I'm sorry," he said after a long time. "I let my fear for you get the better of me."

Eyes narrowed in something very near confusion, Zabuza looked down at the boy. "I was afraid I'd never see you again, and you apologize for something neither of us had control of."

Quiet laughter from the younger male. "I can't help it. I… I was scared that you would die."

Zabuza raised on thin eyebrow. "Haku… we're _both_ dead."

"Of course. I know." At this, the boy seemed to cling a little tighter to his teacher, and the older man ran his fingers through the long strands of hair. A silence stretched between them, until Haku finally ventured to speak again. "Zabuza-san…?"

The swordsman grunted in acknowledgement and pulled away just a little. The eyes turned up at him were wide almost nervous, and Zabuza felt an odd tightening in his throat.

"Is… now okay?"

For a second the words made no sense, but quickly enough he remembered. Haku still looked up at him with those almost desperate eyes, and instead of trying to speak, Zabuza did what felt right. The lips against his own were as soft as he remembered, parting in a little gasp that was too convenient to waste. There was no reason for shyness here, and the older man let this first kiss in their strange new home be as deep and full as he could. Because he loved the boy, and it was okay now.

Whispering the words right into Haku's ear, he could feel the slight shiver that ran over the tracker's skin. "I love you, Haku."

He could feel the smile on his lover's lips, and the softly murmured response was somehow more moving than he would have thought. Hearing those three little words did something for him that he just couldn't explain, and in truth, he doubted it needed an explanation. It was enough to get to hear them. It was enough to get to hold Haku's slim frame, and know that this was everything.

Giving his life to avenge Haku's memory, to rid the world of that pestilent, foul little toad; dying in the way he'd chosen had been Zabuza's act of contrition. With Haku in his arms, there was no doubt in his mind that this was heaven. Even later, when he saw the scar that was left from the boy's fatal wound, the mark left to remind him of what he had put Haku through, he didn't doubt. He had eternity to atone for any wrong he'd done. They both had eternity… and they both had been redeemed.

-END-

(A.N. Well, there you have it. For all of you who reviewed, thank you! And for those who read... you should review, but eh. If I realy did make you guys cry, I'm sorry... that wasn't my intention...)


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